Monthly Archives: April 2012

Last week DVWorks President and CEO, Diane Johnson, was invited to speak at the 61st Lions Club Dinner for people that are blind. For 61 years members of the Burnaby Host Lions Club have picked up people who are vision impaired and taken them to dinner at the Lions Club.

The Lions Club International is the world’s largest service club organization with over 46,000 clubs and 1.35 million members – they are also one of the most effective. For nearly 100 years their members have worked on projects designed to prevent blindness, restore eyesight and improve eye care for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Lions volunteers have taken part in projects that have:

Saved the sight of more than 15 million children by providing eye screenings, glasses and other treatments through Sight For Kids.

Established or strengthened pediatric eye care centers that have helped more than 120 million children.

Helped halt the spread of Trachoma in Ethiopia by providing 10 million doses of the sight-saving drug Azithromycin annually.

Prevented serious vision loss for more than 30 million people worldwide.

Improved eye care for 100 million people by training more than 650,000 eye care professionals and building 315 eye hospitals.

Distributed more than 147 million treatments for River Blindness (also known as Onchocerciasis).

Provided nearly 8 million cataract surgeries.

Vaccinated 41 million children in Africa against measles, a leading cause of childhood blindness.

Since 1990, Lions have raised U.S. $415 million through two SightFirst fundraising campaigns to help provide vision for all. In addition, their members around the world are actively involved in recycling glasses at 17 centers worldwide, supporting Lions Eye Banks that provide eye tissue for sight-saving surgeries, screening the vision of hundreds of thousands of people every year and preventing blindness by providing treatment to those at risk of losing their vision.

In 1925, Helen Keller challenged the Lions to become “knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness“. The Lions accepted the challenge and then some! Today, sight programs remain one of their defining causes.

At the 61st Lions Club Blind Dinner, Diane spoke about Described Video and the shows DVWorks are presently describing and brought the house down with the screening of a clip from one of our favorite shows, I Love Lucy.

To learn more about Lions Club International, to volunteer as a Lion or to donate to their many wonderful programs, please visit: www.lionsclubs.org

Special thanks to longterm Lions Club member Kirk Dickson of the North Burnaby Lions for providing us with so much invaluable information.

Daily Planet first began airing on Discovery Channel Canada way back in January 1995 and quickly became a hit. It is now the go-t0 source for millions of Canadians wanting insight on the latest and greatest of science innovations and cool technology.

Hosted by Ziya Tong and Dan Riskin (who joined the show in 2011 after original host, Jay Ingram announced his retirement), Daily Planet airs Monday to Friday and as of February of this year Descriptive Video Works is proud to say that it is now accessible to the vision impaired!

Being a predominantly news feature driven show, Daily Planet airs LIVE which brings an entirely new set of challenges in terms of audio description… Descriptive Video Works are industry leaders in terms of Live Audio Description having previously made So You Think You Can Dance Canada, The Royal Wedding and The Juno Awards accessible.

In the case of Daily Planet our talented voice artist and describer, Sarah, heads down to the CTV studios 5 days a week as the show is broadcast and describes the show live over the secondary audio channel. Sometimes Sarah gets certain segments to look at in advance and perhaps have an idea of what she might say but since most segments aren’t mixed until just before they air, most of the time she has to describe it as she sees it.

Sarah says, “I love Daily Planet. It’s a very interesting show that I always feel a little bit smarter after describing it! I always bring home little factoids to share with my husband. I also enjoy the challenge of the ‘live’ aspect and I really try to imagine that I am sitting with someone who can’t see the show, and am describing it for them. it’s a challenge because not only do I have to describe what I see on the fly but I also try to fit my descriptions to the tone and mood of the segment, so descriptions aren’t jarring for the listener.”

I wonder how Sarah described this strange craft that appeared in a recent show?!

This futuristic craft is called Dream Chaser and is a future contender for the replacement of the Space Shuttle.